Stuffed Bushman is finally going home

NEW YORK The stuffed body of a spear-throwing African Bushman willhead back to his native Botswana next month after spending much ofthe 20th century in a Spanish museum.

But he may not be destined for reburial in his homeland, as calledfor by a chorus of international critics who said the display wasracist.

Some Botswanan officials are talking about launching a debate onwhether the Bushman should be preserved as an exhibit instead.

Many museums exhibit Egyptian mummies, and the frozen bodies ofInca human sacrifices are displayed in South America.

"It might be difficult to argue that he should now be preserved,"said Tebelelo Boang, a spokesman at the Botswanan mission to theUnited Nations. "But a debate would be very useful on what shouldhappen to him."

Several African countries, the United Nations and the Organizationof African Unity all say a developed European country has no right todisplay an African man in such a way.

"For black people, it's humiliating," said Alfonso Arcelin, aHaitian-born physician living in Spain.

Preserving and displaying the Bushman in Botswana would enable thestory of his posthumous trek to Europe and back to be more easilytold.

Edouard Verraux, a French scientist and taxidermist, stole theBushman's body from a freshly dug grave in Botswana sometime in thelast quarter of the 19th century.

After having the corpse stuffed and mounted, he placed a spear inthe right hand and a shield in the left, then sold the corpse toFrancisco de Dauder, a Spanish naturalist with a taste for thebizarre.

In 1916, Dauder began displaying the Bushman in a glass case inthe newly opened Dauder Museum of Natural History in Banyoles, 100kilometers northeast of Barcelona.

Quickly given the nickname "El Negro" by local Spaniards, theBushman stood in the company of several other grotesque exhibits,which included a calf with two heads, a double-mouthed piglet andanother calf with seven legs.

For years, the house of horrors attracted the curious, but rarelythe critical. Letters of protest began to arrive in the 1980s afterAfrican immigrants settled in the area. When Spain hosted the 1992Olympics, some African countries even talked of a boycott.

The Bushman will be returned to Botswana under an agreementbetween Banyoles and the Spanish government.